Free Republic

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has dismissed two more top security officials following the worst unrest in three decades in the central Asian country. Authorities said the situation has stabilized with forces from the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization fully deployed. Russia's state news agency Tass said nearly 6,000 people, including foreigners, were arrested in last week's violent protests. Reports said at least 164 people were killed during the unrest, which mostly took place in the country's biggest city, Almaty.

Ocasio-Cortez was spotted last week without a face mask while vacationing in Miami. A short clip posted to social media showed the congresswoman waving to bargoers to cheers and applause. She was seen hugging a drag performer at an outdoor event hosted by actor, Billy Porter. Ocasio-Cortez has had a history of criticizing Florida for its lax COVID-19 restrictions during the early waves of the pandemic. Conservative reporters called out the New York representative for her supposed “hypocrisy.”

Many demonstrators who gathered at Wenceslas Square chanted, "Freedom," challenged the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines in general and rejected the idea of vaccinated children, according to the AP. The large demonstration followed several smaller ones in cities across the Czech Republic on Saturday. The previous Czech government announced vaccine mandates in December for those 60 and older as well as for health care workers and first responders.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) formally replied on Sunday to the January 6 select committee’s request to meet with him as part of its investigation, denouncing the request as “outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry.” Jordan gave his reply in a letter obtained by Breitbart News and addressed to committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) after weeks of reviewing the committee’s request, which was made December 22. “This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core Constitutional principles, and would serve to further erode legislative norms,” Jordan wrote. Read a copy of the letter below: The...

“What were some of the biggest things that happened in 2021?” That was the opening question to two very different focus groups of voters convened by Times Opinion this week. The wide-open question was intended to see what was top of mind for the two separate groups — nine Democrats and eight Republicans from across the country — who weren’t told the discussions would focus on the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the state of democracy in America. Unprompted, the Democrats started off with these answers: “The Capitol in January.” “Definitely.” “Absolutely.” And the Republicans started off with...

The basic point here is that wind energy shows up only sporadically and unpredictably, and tends to disappear when it is needed the most. The worst time for a blackout is when the mercury is at -20, as it was yesterday where I live. Note where electricity was actually coming from in the chart above: coal, the dark brown line, was the principal source, while natural gas, the light brown line, is only slightly behind. These are the sources that liberals want to do away with. Wind was flighty; sometimes it worked, but often it didn’t. Is that how you...

A CRACK team of scuba-diving sleuths has solved a staggering seven cold cases in just two months, bringing much-needed closure to heartbroken families who had been left without answers for years. The group, known as Chaos Divers, operates out of Southern Illinois and is comprised of divers Jacob Grubbs and Eric Bussick, and head of logistics Lindsey Bussick. The group users sonar technology to help solve cold cases that in some instances have been open for decades. Between October and December of last year, the trio managed to solve seven missing persons cases in a number of different states, including...

The alleged catalyst for the change has been the looming Fed rate hikes... A few of the bubbles bursting: Crypto: Crypto assets are suffering crashes the likes of which would be considered cataclysmic in general markets. Bitcoin is down nearly 40% from its highs; Ethereum is down 34%. More colorful (yet less commanding) names like Polkadot are down 50%. Crypto has seen such crashes before and may well rise from the ashes in a nanosecond. But as I wrote recently, you can’t value crypto so there’s no logical basis to own it. It is a classic speculative gamble. And such...

Papers being checked for the second time tonight for being outside past curfew in Montreal, Quebec. ...

Letters from Catholics around the world will be placed in a chest and carried to Rome.PARIS (LifeSiteNews) — An association of French Catholics is organizing a march from Paris to Rome to convince Pope Francis to temper his restrictions on the Traditional Latin Mass as laid out in the motu proprio Traditionis Custodes. The march is due to take place this spring, starting in Paris on March 6 and ending in Rome on May 1. It will be held under the motto “all roads lead to Rome.” The march is organized by La Voie Romaine (the Roman road), an association...

The UN imposed an arms embargo on the Houthis in 2015. The United States and ally Saudi Arabia — which leads the military coalition backing the Yemeni government — have long accused Iran of supplying the Houthis with weapons, a charge Tehran denies. Citing a confidential report by a UN Security Council panel of experts on Yemen, the Journal wrote that boats and land transport were used to smuggle weapons made in Russia, China and Iran into Yemen. deck, in a photo released Dec. 21, 2021. (Mass Communication Specialist Seaman Elisha Smith/US Navy via AP) WASHINGTON — The United Nations...

Mobile Attacker’s Mindset Series – Part II Evaluating how attackers operate when there are no rules leads to discoveries of advanced detection and response mechanisms. ZecOps is proudly researching scenarios of attacks and sharing the information publicly for the benefit of all the mobile defenders out there. iOs persistence is presumed to be the hardest bug to find. The attack surface is somewhat limited and constantly analyzed by Apple’s security teams. Creativity is a key element of the hacker’s mindset. Persistence can be hard if the attackers play by the rules. As you may have guessed it already – attackers...

Milk is the third most wasted food and drink product in the UK, after potatoes and bread, with around 490 million pints tipped away every year, according to the recycling charity Wrap. From the end of January, the retailer will instead place "best before" dates on 90% of its own-brand milk and will encourage customers to use a sniff test to check quality. It also estimates 85 million pints of milk waste may be due to customers following "use by" labels despite research showing it can be used days after the date

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Sunday the Biden administration is hostile toward his efforts to get treatment for coronavirus for Floridians, which the state has been offering in conjunction with vaccines for those who want them. DeSantis told radio personality Mark Levin on his show “Life, Liberty & Levin” on Fox News on Sunday that the ongoing bad press and criticism from Washington is “political.” “We set up these centers this summer when we started to see the delta variant rear its head, and it worked,” DeSantis said. “We were keeping tens of thousands of people out of...

Conservative CNN pundit Mary Katharine Ham slammed her network for its blatantly biased coverage in a series of Twitter posts that went viral. Ham, in response to criticism by New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for saying that media coverage of the congressional baseball shooting was minimal. “He’s arguing the shootings didn’t get much coverage? Pretty sure they were a huge story,” Haberman claimed. She was wrong, and Ham pointed that out. “I lived a block from the baseball field. Under 48 hours, the news vans were gone. I was on TV, live from the...

An Upstate New York wedding photographer has lost her bid to refuse service to same-sex couples after a federal judge dismissed with prejudice her lawsuit against the state. Emilee Carpenter, a photographer and blogger based in the Southern Tier, sued the state in April, alleging that the state’s human rights law violated her First Amendment rights to free speech, free association, and free religious expression. She also said the law violated the establishment clause and her right to due process. Carpenter named New York Attorney General Letitia James and Interim Human Rights Commissioner Jonathan Smith as defendants. Carpenter said that...

The Archdiocese of Miami is now requiring everyone to wear a mask while attending Mass, as tens of thousands of new COVID cases are reported in Florida every day. The change went into effect on Tuesday and affects all Mass and church gathering attendees, regardless of vaccination status, the Archdiocese said in a statement Wednesday. The decision to once again require masks at the 109 parishes in the Archdiocese of Miami was made after seeing the proliferation of cases, said Mary Ross Agosta, a spokeswoman for the archdiocese. “We need to be cautious and we need to be proactive,” she...

TORONTO (LifeSiteNews) – The government of Ontario’s publicly available data regarding COVID-19 shows that most people in hospitals because of COVID-19 are “fully vaccinated.”According to the data, as of January 7, there are 1,327 “Fully vaccinated cases” in hospitals, compared with just 441 “Unvaccinated cases.” For “Partially vaccinated cases,” there are 100 people in the hospital.Of those in ICU in Ontario, there are 119 “Unvaccinated cases,” 17 “Partially vaccinated cases” and 106 “Fully vaccinated cases.”When it comes to those who test positive for COVID, Ontario’s data shows that the vast majority come from “fully vaccinated” people.On January 7, the province...

SALAMANCA, Spain (AP) — When Kent Albright, a Baptist pastor from the United States, arrived as a missionary to Spain in 1996, he was unprepared for the insults and threats, or the fines from the police for handing out Protestant leaflets on the streets of Salamanca. “Social animosity was big — they had never seen a Protestant in their life,” said Albright, recalling one woman who whispered, “Be thankful we don’t throw stones at you.” He couldn’t have imagined that 25 years later, he would be pastoring an evangelical congregation of 120 and count about two dozen other thriving Protestant...

A historic archive of Freemasonry amassed by the Nazis in their wartime purge could still reveal secrets about the society, researchers say. From insight into women's Masonic lodges to the musical scores used in closed ceremonies, the trove - housed in an old university library in western Poland - has already shed light on a little known history. But more work remains to be done to fully examine all the 80,000 items that date from the 17th century to the pre-World War II period.